Down the hall, Champ and Doc worked frantically to board up the back door window again. Champ glanced down the hall, saw nothing but the bathroom door, open just a few inches. She went back to work. She didn’t know the infected nun in the bathroom, the one clutching a handgun, had already lost interest in studying her hideous reflection. She backed away from the mirror. Touched the door, opening it just a few critical inches. Peered out at the hallway.
And she saw Bowden hard at work, bent over the computer console, typing away. Searching for a solid broadband signal. The sight of his wound, blood seeping through the bandage, inflamed her senses. The nun hated him instantly, his health and vigor and calm, his very humanity. Bowden stopped typing, scribbled some notes. He was close, he knew it. He went back to work. The nun came through the bathroom door. She moved slowly, steadily towards Bowden.
Champ and Doc flinched when they heard a crowd of the infected slamming up against the back walls, seemingly all around the building, maniacs struggling to break in through shattered windows, boards and nailed-shut wooden doors. Distracted, the nun paused, turned and moved away towards the white curtain and the entrance to the first examining room. The curtain billowed behind her. Bowden didn’t even notice she’d been observing him. He kept typing, muttering, scrolling.
Champ stared down the hall. She felt an unwelcome chill crawl up her spine. The bathroom door, had it been open before? Or had I just seen it open this last time? She turned and stared. Bowden was working at the computer console. The hallway was empty. But the door was almost wide open now. Further than before. Oh, shit. No.
Inside the bathroom, a parade of creatures started to arrive. A grinning Oriental man in a karate outfit crawled through the window. He carried a piece of pipe. He dropped to the floor, moved away. A housewife in glasses had been waiting her turn outside. She began to clamber over the sill.
“Uh, Doc?”
“Not now,” Doc said. An attack came. They both fought off a pair of gory hands, Champ by pounding with hammers and Doc by cutting with a scalpel. Champ lost a few precious moments. “Doc, the bathroom maybe?”
In exam room one, Fred was still trying to do the sad deed. Shears high, heart in his throat, staring down at his friend Riggs, that throat exposed. Fred closed his eyes. Tried to think of what to scream, something loud and brave just to be able to go through with it, something to cover the icky sounds.
By the back window, listening to the horrors outside, trembling in the shadows, were Theresa and Timothy. BAM one of the boards burst off their window and a huge rock came crashing through. Splinters flew everywhere, one jabbed Timothy in the eye. Infected people jammed up the window, struggled to get in. Theresa and Timothy stabbed back with their sharpened broomsticks and knitting needles. Soon they were both covered with sticky blood. Timothy thought, oh God, I got some in my mouth, I swallowed some tainted blood, does this mean…
In the hallway, a beeping sound began. The computer screen flickered. Bowden reacted with a war whoop. “About fucking time! We got a signal!”
Bowden started to call for Cap. And then he felt the presence of someone else nearby. At first, Bowden figured Cap must have come back into the room while he was working. Bowden relaxed, smiled and turned around with the good news. His mouth dropped open. He looked up to find somebody in a karate outfit. The image was so entirely incongruous he found himself momentarily paralyzed.
“Wait…”
The large infected guy raised a piece of pipe and took a swing at him. Bowden went ass over teakettle backwards in his chair. He landed hard, lost wind and set off his aching shoulder. His body had crashed into several cardboard boxes full of pain and anxiety medications. Pills and powders spurted everywhere in a white cloud. Bowden felt his wound open again. He screamed and went for his gun. Before he could aim, the karate guy with the pipe trotted away. Bowden fired anyway, but saw nothing but the flowing white curtain. Drugs were everywhere, just deep breathing got him high as a hooker at a rap concert.
The gunshot brought Doc and Champ back into focus. Champ grabbed Doc’s arm and pointed at the bathroom door. Doc nodded, understanding. He gauged the risks of running down the hall, and wondered how he’d secure the window if there were others lying in wait. So many things to worry about, so little time to make decisions. Doc felt old. And somehow the kid, the poor kid mattered most of all. Doc felt someone who’d had so little chance at life at least deserved a chance to keep it.
««—»»
Up in the attic, Bill Ray was stroking Officer Paris’s hair. He gave her a shoulder massage. Just to keep them both loose, he said. And to be thinking about something, anything but what was actually happening down below. She was a pretty woman in her own way, he realized. And interested in him underneath, no doubt about it. He kissed her gently on the cheek, just a brotherly thing, and Paris didn’t object.
BOOM. Billy Ray flinched at the sound of the gunshot. He and Officer Paris exchanged worried looks.“Get down there,” Office Paris said. “Maybe they need help.”
Billy Ray shook his head feverishly. Officer Paris knew she’d been told to man her post, but wondered if another gun hand would be needed. Of course leaving Billy Ray alone in the attic might not be the most secure decision, either.
She called out, “Bowden, was that you? You okay down there?”
Bowden looked down at his uniform. He was completely covered with tablets and pills and white powder from broken packets. He sneezed. It took him a few seconds to remember how to talk. “I’m okay. Stay where you are.” Bowden felt weirdly high from all the drugs and whatever was being absorbed through his open wound. He sneezed again and rapidly searched his pockets for more ammo. Behind him, the housewife in glasses who had been waiting outside appeared in the bathroom doorway. She was clutching a thick piece of wood with a spike in one end. Perhaps something taken from a construction site or the trash out back. Bowden did not see her.
In the first exam room, Fred finally got the guts. He screamed and brought the garden shears down, aiming to penetrate Riggs’s bare throat before yanking the blades apart. The infected nun with the handgun was only a few feet behind him. Startled by the shout, she fired the weapon from reflex. POP.
Fred grunted. Riggs went on sleeping.
Fred felt weak. He changed his mind, lowered the shears. Coming down with the flu or something, feeling queasy. He looked down at his stomach and was startled to discover blue intestines protruding through a substantial exit wound. In fact, his stomach was a bloody mess. And getting bloodier by the second. His knees buckled. Fred sank to the floor but managed to turn his upper body. His eyes widened in surprise. Kind of like the fucking Sound of Music standing there in the middle of a zombie flick, he thought, and then saw that the nun was holding a handgun. Damn, I been shot by an angel. She fired again, as if curious to see if the weapon still worked. Fred flipped backwards, half of his face gone, dead. The infected nun looked down at the weapon as if amazed at what had just happened.
Doc and Champ had finally quieted their area. Doc saw Bowden lying in the huge pile of broken boxes and medication bottles. The bathroom door was still open but no one was there for the moment. Doc didn’t call out to Bowden, didn’t want to attract undue attention to Champ. He tapped her to stay still, crawled a few feet away and peered down the hall at the back window. It was hell on earth down there, with Theresa and Timothy stabbing away. Theresa was a bitch on wheels. Doc watched as she nailed one of the creatures in the gut with the sharpened broomstick and forced him back outside. Timothy almost vomited. A bloody hand snatched one of his knitting needles.
“Hey!”
A second hand tore another needle away from Timothy, then someone slugged him in the face. Hard. Timothy’s nose was flattened and bleeding and he seemed stunned.
Theresa fighting on, didn’t see that he’d become helpless.
Doc called, “Look out!”
Two hands grabbed Timothy, slammed his head repeatedly into the wall, got his broken nose a se
cond time. Moans, grunts, blood spurting. Even from a distance, Doc could see that Timothy had gone into shock. Theresa kept fighting, skewered another infected woman with her broomstick, hung her up squealing for a moment and flipped her into the crowd outside. She looked like an Amazon warrior princess. Meanwhile, her husband lay dying at her side.
“Theresa!” Doc called.
She paused to listen, caught on a fraction too late. Timothy slumped down. Theresa screamed. Suddenly Timothy echoed her as one of his own knitting needles was driven through his right eye. Reflexively, Theresa dropped her spear and knelt by his side. Champ moved closer to Doc. She was torn between not wanting to see and needing to know.
Frustrated, Doc called “He’s gone, get out of there!”
Timothy was dying, pinned against the wall, staring and bleeding, jerking and gasping. A blur of motion from the half-open window, the shattered boards. Theresa screamed again and whirled like a top. She stamped her feet, wild eyed. One of the infected had stabbed her in the back with a broomstick. It went deep, then deeper. Unbelievably, Theresa managed to remove the stick with a loud grunt. She turned it around and shoved it through the infected man’s chest. Weakened, she shoved, kicked the others back outside and propped a slat of wood against the opening. Theresa sank to her knees. Doc could see she was turning pale from internal bleeding…
The window was momentarily safe again. But Theresa was dying, and her husband, lying there pierced through the eye, was already dead.
««—»»
Bowden shook himself free of the drug-induced fog. He’d been inhaling five kinds of pain medication, and some had been getting into his bloodstream through the open wound. He struggled to sit up. Realized someone was standing over him. A stranger. Just some guy in a business suit, except he had the face of a lesser demon and the eyes of a rabid dog. Bowden lay flat on his back as before, raised his Glock. He fired twice. Twin dark, smoking holes appeared, one on the left side of the expensive gray suit near the waistline, the other just below the gold clip on the salmon tie. A little dark blood spurted, quite delicately.
The man shook like a wet dog. He seemed impervious to the wounds. He threw off the pain and charged. Bowden fired three more times, really lit the guy up and he went down in the boxes of dope. More powder flew everywhere. Bowden sneezed again, his head went woozy from the narcotics and loss of blood.
“Hello? The voice came from up the stairs and around the corner, as in the attic Officer Paris reacted to the gunshots. Poor Bowden was all alone. She couldn’t take it anymore. She shoved Billy Ray’s hand away from her stomach and snapped at him.
“That is the last straw, buddy. Look, if you’re not gonna help them, then I’m going downstairs and you can stay here alone.”
Billy Ray winced. “No fucking way.”
Officer Paris gave him a look of contempt that could have killed a pool of piranha. Why is it always the pretty boys who make you all wet but they don’t have any balls when it counts? “I’m serious.”
He nodded, and for a moment her hopes rose. Then Billy Ray shrugged. “Okay. Okay. You go.”
Officer Paris sighed. She watched him rearrange his pants to hide the hard on, then turned her back and walked down the steps without looking back. Asshole. The noise got louder as she approached the bottom of the stairs. The night had exploded into shrieks and the sick thumping of blades and boards and nails and blunt instruments into living flesh. An inner level of hell.
…In the second exam room, Boffo and Callie were stabbing and kicking at arms coming in through their window. Behind them was the housewife in glasses who had come in through the bathroom window. She had that board with a nail in it gripped in her hands.
She stumbled their way…
As Officer Paris started down the stairs, Bowden saw yet another infected woman, a stripper in high heels, stumble drunkenly out of the bathroom. She hissed at him like a feral cat. Bowden shot her between the eyes. She fell into a stack of boxes and powder. Bowden swore as it finally dawned on him. He called out.
“Everybody, heads up. Cap? We blew it. Must be a window open in the bathroom.”
In the front office, the metal bars were holding. Cap had yet to fire a shot. Hearing Bowden, he slammed the floor with his palm. “How many?”
“I’m on that.” Bowden stumbled down the hall, trying to figure out what exactly was going on “Best figure at least a few.”
A hideous scream froze Bowden in his tracks. The first exam room? Callie screamed again. And then Boffo screamed even louder. Bowden rushed that way, moving clumsily due to his own wounds and exhaustion. He peeked through the curtain. The big clown, his gaudy uniform bloody and shredded, had dropped to the floor. Bowden raised his gun, someone else was in the room, but Callie was in the way, stabbing at something. It was a woman, the infected housewife in glasses. Callie stuck her.
The woman stared down at the hole in her arm for a long moment, then looked up enraged. She suddenly attacked, wailing. Callie nailed her left shoulder and got splattered with blood. They went at it. Bowden kept looking for a shot, but the two women were in hand to hand combat. Callie shoved the housewife and the woman tripped. Callie stepped away. The woman dropped to the floor, clawing at Boffo, ripping off his big red nose. It honked a couple of times, almost woefully. Boffo didn’t resist. He was whimpering, laying on his side, squirming on the floor.
Bowden cringed, made a face. The poor bastard. That spiked board went right up his aching ass.
“Do something! Shoot her!” Callie shouted, and she grabbed one of the clown’s big plastic shoes and slapped at the infected housewife. Bowden felt high enough to appreciate the humor. He giggled, fired once and then his gun jammed. Joke-time over. On auto-pilot, Bowden quickly performed the “tap, rack, and ready” drill to clear his weapon and immediately discovered that his gun had jammed on the last round. He was now out of ammunition. Bowden weighed his options. In his weakened, wounded state, this section looked like a lost cause. He retreated past the curtain, back into the debris-strewn, powdered hallway to find something to use as a weapon.
Inside the examining room, Callie failed to stop a murder. The infected woman bit down on Boffo’s throat. She yanked with her teeth. Blood sprayed everywhere. With a gurgle of what sounded almost like relief, Boffo stopped writhing. The housewife spit out his flesh. She got up, adjusted her glasses, looked around for someone else to maim.
Callie was lying still as a mannequin, down on the floor, right next to Boffo. She held her breath, playing dead. The housewife ignored her, lurched to the right, then the left. She brayed like some kind of wild horse and left through the white curtain which was now splattered like something from a Halloween exhibition at an amusement park.
And out in the hallway, all of a sudden, absolute silence.
Officer Paris moved carefully down the stairs and into the hallway, gun extended. What a mess. There were powdered drugs everywhere, torn boxes, dead bodies. She looked away from the bodies. She crept over to where Bowden had been sitting, near the laptop, kept looking around. And then something disturbed that silence. Officer Paris felt her breath catch. Felt the air changing pressure, cooling slightly. Behind her, the bathroom door slowly opened.
Paris actually heard it creaking. She turned slowly, terrified of what she’d find, like a woman struggling to awaken from a bad dream.
A raspy voice said, “Hello, honey.”
Office Paris stepped back. A hideous old woman in a walker faced her, her ancient skin now shredded and torn. Paris fought to take in that shock of white hair, now matted and filthy with dirt and leaves and blood. The torn pink nightdress exposed flaccid teats, a sagging belly and cotton pubic hair. The old woman had been cut partway open. Paris could see something coiled, wet and shiny inside. Pulsing.
“Momma?”
The thing chuckled and reached for her.
Officer Paris lost it. This thing is not my mother! She fired and fired again. She emptied her clip into the creature that had onc
e rocked and sung to her. And then Paris realized someone had snuck up behind her yet again. She whirled. It was the infected karate man, the guy with the iron pipe. She threw her gun at him. He grinned and dodged away, clouds of white powder like snowflakes around his filthy feet. Office Paris moaned and tried to run. He swung the pipe like a ball player on steroids. She grunted as it hit the back of her skull with a loud CLANK. Mercifully, Officer Paris dropped dead.
10:28 PM
Doc and Champ were on the floor below the newly boarded up back door window. They watched Officer Paris enter the room, saw her empty her clip into the old woman. Saw her die. It all seemed to happen in a time warp, as if everything had been programmed to speed up, so they’d have no way to interfere, and to now slow down again, as if to exaggerate their own terror. Doc just shook his head back and forth, felt his mind slipping. But knew he had to think of the kid. The kid.
The karate man with the pipe turned their way. His weapon was now covered with blood, a tuft of dark hair, and something gray, glistening. The karate man took a few silent strokes of golf as if mentally somewhere else. Then he looked up and around and finally down the hall. Saw them. Seemed to appear and disappear once, twice. Doc shook his head and blinked. The lights were flickering. On. Off. On. Off. Stayed on then, but the power clearly far weaker than before.
Doc grabbed Champ’s hand. “No. Not the lights. You’ve got to be fucking kidding.”
“Doc? Doc?” Champ finally seemed to be losing her nerve.
“Get behind me, kid.”
The karate man started down the hall in the dimming light, tapping the wall with his lead pipe, first one side and then the other, whack and then again thunk.
Theresa came to at the foot of her window. She saw her husband Timothy, with the sewing needle through his eye, saw the gore everywhere, seemed to absorb that they were losing. Had already lost.
“No! Why Lord, why?”
Pain Page 7
